This invention relates to a combination ramp/tailgate for use with pickup trucks and the like, where the ramp/tailgate may be folded and nested into a compact barrier to serve as a tailgate and also unfolded and extended to serve as a ramp from the ground to the truck bed.
There have been a variety of proposals over the years for built-in ramps for use with pickup trucks ranging from simple bi-fold ramps (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,735,454, 3,976,209, 3,713,553 and 2,727,781), to somewhat more elaborate multiple panel or section ramps (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,864,673, 4,668,002, 4,571,144 and 3,642,156) and further to still more elaborate and complicated collapsible or telescopic ramp structures (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,923,360, 4,628,561 and 4,527,941). These prior art ramp structures all suffer from one or more of the following drawbacks: excessive weight to achieve the desired load strength; bulkiness so that the ramp cannot be folded or collapsed into a compact configuration; insufficient load strength so that only lightweight objects can be used on the ramp, and continued need of a separate tailgate along with the ramp so that the appearance is unsightly and bulky. For those configurations in which the ramp structure is somehow included in existing tailgate designs, the ramp structure is typically constructed to handle only lightweight loads.